This story was interesting mostly because it's the true ghost story that we read for today.
Quentin Compson is nine during the events this story. A story that took place 15 years ago as he tells it. So arguably Quentin is 24. However Quentin committed suicide at the age of 19.
That's the telling part of this story. Where is this story being told from? Are we getting it from beyond the grave? Has Faulkner simply forgotten the year of Quentin's death is 1910? Was the story written before or after The Sound and the Fury?
Since it was published for the first time in 1931 in a collection of Short Stories. It is impossible to tell without further research if Faulkner wrote this before the novel or after. But it's interesting because like Sophocles before him, Faulkner is using the same characters but perhaps not the same person.
In the quote unquote Oedipus Trilogy Oedipus and Antigone are not the same in any of the stories. This is because the Trilogy wasn't intended to be read as such. They were all collected later for publishing reasons.
But can we argue this for Faulkner? He seemed to think that he wrote the same Quentin Compson in both Sound and Absalom! Absalom!. However I still disagree with his assessment. There is very little in the Quentin from Absalom! that suggests that in less than a year he will have committed suicide. It does not work.
And that's fine.
Faulkner is working to create a mythology. In Mythology time isn't a clear span. Some events seem to happen both before and after other events. So this story functions in that same pattern. Faulkner is able to bring you back to Yoknapatawpha without worrying about internal consistency. Enjoy the story and look for the meaning.
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This is a very interesting observation, and something, to be honest, I didn't catch when I read "That Evening Sun Go Down." I have a tendency to skip over dates when I read, a habit that has put me at a disadvantage in this case. I don't think the idea that Faulkner simply forgot the dates he used is a possibility. After all, everything in Faulkner means something. So the fact that the dates and character traits don't quite jive must have been intended in one way or another and are significant. If anyone does further research on this and finds out what's going on, I would love to know. I'm quite intrigued.
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